CANSU YILDIRAN: SAVE THE DATE, SATURDAY AFTERNOON, OCTOBER 5

Protocinema, in partnership with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC), presents Cansu Yıldıran’s New York premiere: a photographic-sculptural installation on the possibilities of a migration for a woman, from October 5 – November 10, 2024, at the Arts Center at Governors Island.

Cansu Yıldıran’s semi-fictional journey begins on the Turkish shores of the Black Sea and melds into a road trip through the United States, from Michigan to the Pacific Ocean. Yıldıran’s photographs address population movements and human intervention across vast natural landscapes. Large-scale structures emerge from an assembly of small pieces, allowing for collective acts while permitting her materials to take their own form. Photographs are tiled, wrapped, and hung over makeshift sail-shaped frames, which hinge from wooden columns of an 1870s munitions warehouse on New York’s Governors Island, facing Manhattan and Ellis Island. Yıldıran’s exhibition opens on Saturday Afternoon, October 5, one month ahead of the American presidential elections, in which asylum and immigration policies, as well as racial and class divides, are cornerstones.

Cansu Yıldıran explores the concept of displacement within the borders of photography, through landscapes, portraits, and intimate spaces. They aim to reckon with the complex nature of displacement within the "immortalizing" nature of photographs. Does portraying individuals’ experiences in regards to these phenomena impact their identities? A home is not merely a physical space, it’s also shaped by relationships, memories, and psychological perspectives. Yıldıran explores the social and political meanings of home through documentary-style narratives, inviting viewers into their labyrinth where they reshape concepts of what it is to belong.

This exhibition will be accompanied by PROTOZNE Cansu Yıldıran, a dedicated zine with commissioned text and artwork images, available in printed form free at the exhibition and digitally online.

Cansu Yıldıran (they/them), born in Istanbul, Turkey in 1996, is an artist and photographer whose practice can be regarded as a persistent quest for home. Over this journey, stops might be a body, a place, an emotion, a friend, or a community. Yıldıran received the FOAM, Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam’s Netherlands Talent Award in 2024, was awarded the Women Photograph Project Grant, 2022. In 2021, they placed first in the Resistance category of the All Out Photo Award, a global LGBT+ online activism network, presented with MTV; winning images were displayed, over the course of New York and Copenhagen Pride, and at exhibition spaces around the world. Yıldıran was shortlisted for the main prize of the 2021 PhMuseum Photography Grant and selected for the World Press Photo Joop Swart Masterclass in 2018. They have exhibited their works at FOAM, Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam, Netherlands; the Thessaloniki Museum of Photography, Greece; Pera Museum, Istanbul, Turkey; Pinakothek der Moderne, Germany; Odunpazarı Modern Museum, OMM, Eskişehir, Turkey; Elgiz Museum, Istanbul, Turkey; Leica Gallery, Istanbul, Turkey; the Arles Photography Festival, France; and the Verzasca Foto Festival, Switzerland. Yıldıran has participated in photography book workshops with publishers Kazuma Obara and Calin Kruse, and received a one-year Women Photograph mentorship from Nicole Tung. Their works have been published in Visa pour I’image, Photography Festival, the British Journal of Photography, Dazed Magazine, the Washington Post, and The Guardian. Cansuyildiran.com

Supported by SAHA Association, Istanbul, Turkey; Ari Meşulam, Haro Cümbüşyan and Bilge Öğüt, Ayşe Umur, Adnan Yerebakan, David Howe, Jane Lombard

Special thanks: Anna Raginskaya, Joy Feasley, Wormwood and Haze Fine Art Services, Koray Duman, Shannon Bowser, Jason Heard and Sheldon La Pierre, Serkan Kaptan, Alper Turan, Ayşe Yıldıran, Robin Pedtke, Jaret Beane, Canan Bozbağ, and Onur Karaoğlu

Protocinema is an itinerant cross-cultural art organization that commissions and presents site-aware art around the world. Our purpose is to support dialogue between cultures on equal footing and create opportunities for listening and expression. Protocinema works towards an understanding of difference across regions through its exhibitions, commissions, public programs, screening tours, mentorship, the Protocinema Emerging Curator Series (PECS), and Protodispatch, a monthly digital publication edited with Laura Raicovich. Protocinema was founded in 2011 by Mari Spirito. Protocinema.org

Press inquiries: Sidian Liu sidian@protocinema.org or Mari Spirito mari@protocinema.org, +1 917 660 7332